


Threshold

by Macadamanaity



Category: Angels in America - Kushner, House M.D.
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-29
Updated: 2009-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-03 23:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macadamanaity/pseuds/Macadamanaity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's knowing and then there's knowing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threshold

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to apatheia_jane who was brave enough to beta this despite never having seen AIA and despite the insanity that is this fic. Also, blame likethesun2 for this ever having been written.

House snuck a glance at the woman sitting beside him. She was talking. To someone outside the window. Serenely, contentedly and with such certainty she spoke her soliloquy to a space just beyond the airplane’s wing.

He snorted. Crazy person.

His derision broke whatever spell she was under and her gaze outside.

“I have emotional problems,” she offered in apparent explanation for her behavior. Her voice was a sort of monotone, or maybe she just stressed the wrong words and syllables. It was sharp, though, and direct. House appreciated it for a moment and then he rolled his eyes.

“Duh!” His mental DSM-IV was rapidly flipping pages and performing cross references with recent journal articles about the symptoms of mental illnesses and their corresponding drugs.

“You’re new at this,” she stated, turning to him with a hint of smugness and a small, unsettling smile.

House paused in his diagnosis and raised an eyebrow. It was for this reason he preferred conversations with the mentally unstable. They were unpredictable to a certain degree. There was nothing exact about them, and sometimes they had multiple truths to lie about. They were interesting.

“At flying? No, I’m an expert at leaving New Jersey far beneath me.”

The woman gave one single bark of laughter. From the P.A. came a few tinny notes. No announcement followed but the echo of a clarinet remained in House’s ears. She didn’t seem to notice, leaning in just a little too close for comfort.

“You’re a doctor!” Her voice was too loud too, but since he was pretty sure that seemingly unsubstantiated but eerily accurate pronouncements were _his_ shtick, curiosity won out over resentment and he asked,

“What makes you think _that_?” Two could play at the weird intonation game.

She appeared to size him up, her eyes pausing on his leg, the pocket from which his Vicodin was calling to him, and finally on his face. He scowled and she seemed to come to a decision.

“Threshold of revelation.”

All right, so she wasn’t a kindred spirit in deductive reasoning. He dismissed her.

“You’re crazy.”

“No shit, Sherlock!”

Stop.

House turned away and shifted his mind to other problems than the passenger beside him who was probably jonesing for some valium or another mother’s best friend. She, thankfully, took the hint and returned to her invisible audience.

His leg throbbed. He _didn’t_ fly a lot any more and never in coach. His leg couldn’t take the lack of space and especially not the stillness. He had to keep moving.

If it had been his mom who had died, he wouldn’t even be here. It’s not like she would have been hurt at his missing the funeral – dead is dead is dead – and facing his dad wasn’t worth a moment’s discomfort. But it was, instead, his father who had shuffled off the mortal coil leaving Blythe a wreck.

He hadn’t actually told anyone. Not Cuddy nor the minions; not even Wilson. And yet his friend had calmly walked into his office, handed him the plane ticket, a packed suitcase and told him to get the fuck to Newark. Wilson had even ducked, totally unperturbed when House swung the cane and then his fist.

Maybe House’s mother had called him. Maybe, after all these years of proximity, Wilson had figured out the body language for ‘My asshole father finally kicked the bucket and I don’t know what to feel about that.’ Either way, this pain in his thigh had Wilson’s name on it and House considered using that stupidly expensive phone on the back of the middle seat with the credit card he had swiped from his friend last week to call him and curse him out in every language he knew.

Instead, his hand drifted to his pocket with practiced ease. Out of sight of prying eyes, he popped the lid on the bottle and palmed a pill. A twin rattle interrupted this ritual.

He turned and saw the woman with a matching bottle in front of her. With the same familiarity, she shook out three pills, put two of them back and then retrieved one. And a half.

House smirked with some pleasure at having a diagnosis confirmed.

“Cheers,” she offered.

House shrugged and they simultaneously dry-swallowed their painkillers.

He risked another glance at her. She was -- she was… leaving her husband who had left her for another man who had left him for his ex-boyfriend who didn’t want him anymore?

One side of his mouth turned down.

“Threshold,” she enunciated, facing forward, “of revelation.”

“You have a wedding band and a one-way ticket.” It was her turn to roll her eyes at him. She gestured vaguely at his leg.

“Does it hurt?”

It was a stupid question and House only just barely stopped short of snarling, ‘What do you think?’

She looked thoughtful, as if he had actually responded.

“It doesn’t, does it? I mean, not really. Not any more. You know?”

“You’re insane.” Automatic, not creative.

She squinted just beyond him, as if looking for something.

“You couldn’t have brought it here if it hurts. It’s a vacation. A vacuum.”

She said this with such a note of hopefulness that House silently assessed her vitals. If she was going to overdose he wanted to be as far away as possible. He saw enough sick people at work. Breath. Pupils. Normal.

She didn’t need a doctor, just a good telling-off.

“Vacation, vacuum, Vicodin, Valium – today is brought to you by the letter V, we get it, Ms. Desperate Housewife! I’m missing a hunk of muscle in my thigh. It’s really gross and very painful. And I know, projecting your ‘pain’ from Joe’s rejection onto the handsome doctor in the next seat over makes it seem more real and thus more manageable with your happy pills, but trust me on this: there are not enough pills in the world to fix what you’ve got without some serious therapy, which you can’t afford because he’ll cut off the credit card after you spend about a week in the nicest hotel you can find. Then you’ll just be another homeless person on the corner who talks to people who _aren’t here_!”

Harper smiled wanly, which only unsettled him more.

“Wilson knows you stole the script. And your leg can’t hurt because it’s not here.”

“I’m in a fucking lot of pain!” House insisted, all the while wondering why he was defending himself to this nut-job whose name he didn’t even know.

“I didn’t say _you_ don’t hurt. It’s just not your leg! Damn it, I don’t care what sort of knot your set of issues has you tied into, just like you clearly don’t give a hoot about mine. Just tell me something I don’t know and I’ll stop. I’ll leave. I’ll go. Something new.”

House was almost sure he heard her add, under her breath, ‘The homo was so much better at this.’

He suddenly paused and replayed all he had said to her back in his head.

“I… think I already did.”

She froze.

“Oh.”

Stop.

“A week?”

“Yeah. Wilson knows?”

“He replaced your pills with placebos four days ago.”

House reached into his pocket and pulled out the bottle. He studied its contents for a minute

“These are the real thing.”

Harper nodded encouragingly. House looked around him. There was a guy in aviator sunglasses about three rows ahead of them, but other than that the plane was empty. Something about it looked wrong, too. Like it hadn’t been refurbished since the eighties.

“I… see.”

“Right. Good. Well, maybe next time you won’t be such a jerk about the whole thing.”

“I _am_ a jerk!” House actually had the good graces to look a bit embarrassed. It was one thing to be nasty to real people who deserved it, but in a fucked-up, trippy dream? It was a waste of good anger and energy.

He needn’t have bothered. The woman was looking out the window again, talking about adventures and he just knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she hadn’t even left New York.

Stop.

He opened his eyes and the stewardess repeated her question about beef or chicken. A baby was screeching from coach and the sound was carrying beyond the flimsy curtain dividing the sections.

Rejecting the airplane food, House dug into his wallet and pulled out Wilson’s credit card. He pulled out the seat-phone and dialed a familiar number.

It rang once. House didn’t even wait for Wilson to chirp out ‘Hello!’ before launching into his significant repertoire of profanity in no less than twelve languages, ending with a hearty ‘Motherfucker!’ The elderly couple two rows down looked impressed and mimed applause. The rest of the passengers studiously ignored him and the flight attendants seemed nervous.

“You’d better hope not,” replied Wilson, completely unflapped, “now that she’s single.”

House grinned.

Stop.

“How did you know?”

Wilson was silent for fifteen seconds. It was his nickel, House supposed. He’d speak slowly.

“How. Did. You. Know?”

“House.”

“_Wilson_.”

“…Your mom called. She told me not to tell you. She was worried.”

“Not what I meant. And you know it.”

Stop.

“It took you this long to notice. What tipped you off?” House took a sharp breath at this confirmation. He stretched out his leg, which was getting stiff. First class perk. Wilson waited for the brilliant series of logical deductions that accompanied House’s discoveries.

“It was.” Stop. “Elementary, my dear Wilson.”

The distant voice sighed.

“Yeah. Me too.”

“See you Monday. Feed Steve.” House hung up before he could hear the response. He knew what it was, anyway.

He closed his eyes again.

  
Harper was still flying.


End file.
